Integrality, Penetrating To The Bones

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we explain the integrality of a new world to the masses so that they become fully convinced of it?

Answer: To experience it, the world will have to go through a lot of troubles. It is not difficult to agree intellectually with total interconnectedness. “Indeed, I’ve read and heard something about this. There is an earthquake in Japan, and we have problems with spare parts. There is a war in Libya, and Denmark is closing the border. I agree: The world is integral.”

However, this integrality must be felt to the marrow of the bones so that there is not a single thought, a single desire to consider ourselves separate from everyone else, from all of humanity. It should sit in us relentlessly, and we should tremble at the thought of it, not just perceive it by the mind.

I have to feel it physically, “in the guts.” Let hunger torture me, I cannot take a bite into my mouth if I am not sure that the same bite is available to everyone. That is what the integral world is: Eating what others do not have is like swallowing poison.

It is difficult to imagine something like that. We are not living it, we simply heard of some sort of connections. It is still a long way from here to an individual meal turned poison and to the blessing from everyone being provided with everything. Imagine the suffering we have to experience on this path.

Question: But we want to prevent sufferings. This means that we have to provide a person with tangible evidence that he should be imbued with this integrality; otherwise, it will be painful. We have to touch his feelings to convey this message.

Answer: Correct, but on the other hand, if we do not resort to the help of the Light, it is impossible to convey this deep knowledge even through the method of social influence. You have to accelerate progress; otherwise, the “press of development,” approaching from behind, will do this for you.

And that is why education is required. We do not talk about the facts taken from advertising; a person must “delve” into these facts so that they surround, “mold,” and “format” him. An objective, abstract presentation will not help here; we have to reach man’s essence. And you are not capable of this.

Reading about the neighbor whose house burned down, a person clicks one’s tongue: “Poor thing. Perhaps the government might help him now.” And he will not move further. The barrier of our egoism could be breached only with the Light. No evidence will help without the Light; even great sufferings do not change people.

It is virtually impossible to advance from sufferings. They can just lead us to the need for spirituality, but not to correction. Only the Light performs correction itself.
[49568]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/28/2011, “The Peace”

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Depression Is Sweeping The World

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News: Depression affects 121 million people worldwide. In can affect a person’s ability to work, form relationships, and destroy their quality of life. At its most severe depression can lead to suicide and is responsible for 850,000 deaths every year….

“In conjunction with the World Health Organization World Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative, researchers from 20 centers collaborated to investigate the prevalence of depression around the globe. To be classified as having had a Major Depressive Episode (MDE) a person was additionally required to fulfill five out of nine criteria including sadness, loss of interest or pleasure, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, disturbed sleep or appetite, low energy and poor concentration….

“MDE were elevated in high-income countries (28% compared to 20%) and were especially high (over 30%) in France, the Netherlands, and America. The country with the lowest incidence was China at 12%….

“Women were twice as likely to suffer depression as men, and the loss of a partner was a main contributing factor…” (Source: BioMed Central)

“The new research discovered that for both British men and women the probability of depression peaked at about 44 years of age. In the US, unhappiness reached a peak at about 40 years of age for women and 50 for men.” (Source: telegraph.co.uk)

My comment: The more our egoism develops and alienates us from each other, the more the world around us manifests itself as integral, that is, opposing us, egoists-individualists, and the more our lives appear harder, worthless, and pointless. And depression in us will be developing as the biggest problem of humankind, which we will not be able to get rid of other than by turning our mutual rejection into attraction.

The chief problem of humanity is to correct human nature. It is a pity that people do not wish to hear about this and suffer. But these sufferings will nevertheless make them realize the cause of evil and accept the method of correction. It is a pity that everything happens by the path of suffering.
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The Future Of The World Is In Our Hands

Dr. Michael LaitmanDear friends!

If you have good materials, fitting for dissemination all over the world with the aim of promoting its general correction, please send them our way (in any language).
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Driven By Suffering, Curiosity, Or The Point In The Heart

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe only thing that is required of us is to cleave to the Creator. That is why everything that happens to us is arranged so as to oblige us to turn to Him, to feel the need in Him now, while we are not in the property of bestowal.

A person lives completely tied and entangled by this life. And all this confusion, problems in life, its order, and disorder gradually push him to a state when he sees that he is unable to cope with this life. He cannot understand it, feel its purpose and reason, and come to its root. And then he feels that he must find the root of life, the One who holds this life, and to reveal and know Him.

Sufferings, curiosity, even the point in the heart hiding inside a person suffering due to a lack of adhesion with the upper one, or something else gradually leads a person to an understanding that he can no longer claim that he runs his life himself, like sovereign Pharaoh who says: “Who is the Creator that I should listened to Him? I am the only ruler here!”

This is how our ego thinks, until it gets the blows that make me see that the Creator is the righteous one and I am the wicked one. And then a person understands that he must reveal the Creator.

Even when a person embarks on this path and makes the first steps, finding himself in a group and beginning to study Kabbalah, much time passes before he starts to realize that he is in a completely deterministic, closed system where everything is already predetermined. This system accepts no free movements or chances in any of its parts: still, vegetative, animate, or human. All of them exist according to the perfect law that advances the entire creation to a state where all of its elements reach adhesion with the upper root.

This adhesion is realized by the human level, the highest element of this system, which includes all the previous steps. But it does not happen due to his own efforts. He needs to ask the Creator to perform all the actions.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/27/2011, Shamati #50

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Playing The Game Is Serious Business

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe game is the most important chore for us. Therefore, when we are reading The Zohar, we have to play at being great Kabbalists and imagine that we reside in the same state as the authors of The Book of Zohar, those who first revealed how much they resented each other, but joined together afterwards.

In the beginning, they hated each other, and consequently, did not feel anything beyond their animate state, the state of this world. From such a deep descent, they started rising to the spiritual level of mutual bestowal and guarantee, and that is when their bond grew so strong that they revealed what is described in The Zohar.

Therefore, from our lack of connection, we too have to try to achieve a bond as strong as theirs, and then we’ll uncover what The Zohar narrates; we will reach the level of the authors of the book. If they started with hatred, literally wanting to kill each other, although we don’t reach such a deep awareness of evil, as much as we are able to do so and correct it, we’ll reach at least some degree of understanding of what they wrote about, and then we’ll climb up on the same degree that they revealed.

Question: How is the game connected with drawing the Surrounding Light?

Answer: The game is everything. It is the only action we perform. The game signifies that I strive for what I desire to achieve. What is the difference between this game and some other creative action in our world if while doing it, we also desire to get something out of it? Good question, but in this game we don’t really know what to do. It has an element of fortune, free will; it has something I cannot know in advance. And that’s why it is called a game.

In this game, I depend on the others as if we are in a true state playing in some imaginary action. But in reality, this imaginary action turns out to be true when we come to it. Therefore, the game is regarded as a serious business.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/25/2011, The Zohar

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FAQ On Kabbalah – Free For All

The Great Simplicity Of Round Perfection

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe entire group and all of humanity in general construct “straight forms” (Yashar) first. I restrict my desire to enjoy, build a screen, and with part of this desire I continue to work further by faith above reason, in bestowal, connected with others.

But in certain desires, I am unable to work in bestowal towards others and I use them only for my own benefit. Thus, I simply restrict these desires. I want to collect myself in a “line,” to aim in one direction, toward bestowal.

Therefore, I build the “lines of connection” between myself and the others—the correct communication system. If after all my work, I manage to turn my desire to enjoy into bestowal, completely transfer it outside of myself, and use it to give to the others, it indicates that I have constructed the image of the giver out of myself. And I myself turn into a “circle.”

I am not stuck in the line anymore. Rather, in all of my desires, in all directions and possibilities, I aim to benefit the others without differentiating, choosing to give more or less to any of them.

Indeed, there are many differences and tests, but I do not test my abilities because I am a “circle,” not limited anymore. But in relation to me, they are not a circle yet; thus I can give to them more and more in various ways. And so it is until the end of the collective correction, when everything unifies in adhesion regarded as “Zivug Rav Paalim UMekabtziel” and turns in circles (Igulim).

In other words, a “circle” is a state of being an infant who isn’t developed yet and stays in its mother’s arms. And hence, he has no responsibilities but to cancel himself. This is how Malchut of the world of Infinity used to cancel itself before the upper force, the upper Light that filled it, and thus it had a “circular” form. It even stayed in adhesion but only by the grace of the upper one.

But in the very end, in State 3, when we return to Infinity once again, we build this “circle” on our own. Hence, we make a restriction on the initial state, create a working place for ourselves, and in it we build the perfect state—ourselves, instead of the Creator. This is described as “My sons have defeated Me.”
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/25/2011, Talmud Eser Serifot

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Most People Have A Slave Mentality

Opinion: (Ivan Dykhovichniy, actor, director, and screenwriter, snob.ru): “Over the past 20 years a new breed of humans has grown, human mutants….

“It took a long time, 15-20 years, to create this new breed of mutants. These people, perhaps, are not at fault. They have no feeling of reciprocity, do not understand what they do, and have no genetic sense of responsibility…. When people have no concept of good and bad, they cannot be helped. I am halted by a police officer, and he cannot be reasoned with, he doesn’t reciprocate. He can take my license away, demand money, and it’s pointless to explain anything to him. All power structures: SWAT units, police, and suchlike are a specially-bred species who have no conscience. This is a huge army of people. They understand that they are uncontrollable. The state does not pay them, so they rob us. That’s the morality everywhere. Moreover, they cannot be reproached.

And nobody has taken any steps to become normal again.”
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Kabbalists About Freedom Of Choice, Part 12

Dr. Michael LaitmanDear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

The Freedom of the Collective and the Freedom of the Individual Are Equal

The benefit of each and every person within his collective is evaluated not according to his own goodness, but according to his service to the public. And vice-versa, we assess the attribute of evil of each and every individual only according to the harm one inflicts upon the public in general, and not by one’s own individual value.

This is because what is found in the collective is only what is found in the individual. And the benefit of the collective is the benefit of each and every individual….

It thus turns out that …the individual is not harmed because of his enslavement to the collective since the freedom of the collective and the freedom of the individual are one and the same, too. And as they share the good, they also share the freedom.
– Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World
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